The birth of technology has brought with it some incredible advances in automation, from factory machinery and driverless transport, right through to the internet and 3D printing for human organ transplants.
But now, a new study has claimed a third of Australian jobs could be completely replaced by machinery by 2030 – potentially leaving a large chunk of the population unemployed.
According to jobs site Adzuna, lower-skilled and manual labour roles are most at risk of being automated in the coming years, particularly in regional areas.
Jobs in South Australia have been deemed the most at risk, with a huge 41 per cent of roles on the line, while those in Sydney and Melbourne are safest, experts found.
“We run the real risk of mass unemployment in our regions and over-population of our major cities,” Adzuna CEO Raife Watson said. “As it stands, Australians who work in manual jobs in regional Australia will face high levels of unemployment over the next decade and will have little choice but to up-skill and move to cities like Sydney and Melbourne.”
The site used previous research from a 2015 government report, named Future workforce trends in NSW: Emerging technologies and their potential impact, which studied jobs in NSW and their chances of becoming automated – before applying it to the rest of the country. Adding to that, they used recent job vacancy and salary data from their own website.
There’s a huge gap between the number of jobs at risk in big cities, compared to more rural areas. While an average of 3.6 job seekers compete for vacancies in Sydney, 8.0 people compete for roles in regional NSW, the study says.
Meanwhile, eight out of ten of the jobs least at risk of being automated are in the healthcare industry, while lower income careers are the most at risk. The average salaries for jobs likely to be replaced by robots is around $63,337 compared to those unlikely to be affected, at $129,099.
Throughout the past few decades, we have seen everyday jobs and household chores slowly replaced as technology develops. While families would wash clothes and dishes by hand, there are now washing machines and dish washers to do the dirty work. Meanwhile, taxis and car services may even face more competition, as driverless cars are introduced.
“New technology is introduced almost every day. Specific types of programmers that were in high demand five years ago now have skills that are obsolete,” Watson added.
“Australians must be vigilant and continue to think about jobs that will be difficult to replace in the future. Build a career in a job that requires emotional intelligence and tasks that cannot be replicated by a machine.”
Australia has already seen much of its factory industry shut down because of the rising cost of human labour compared to automation. Both Ford and Holden closed their doors in recent years, leaving hundreds of Aussies unemployed.